What a year you were 2022! Started the first days of the year on the set of what, in December, went on to become an award winning Aussie drama series (ya’ll seen The Twelve!?). Everything in between was a WILD ride. Not all of it was good and easy and salty ocean dipped…. But that’s life… and I’m so grateful to still be on the journey. So here’s a little summary (a little later than most) of my 2022 JOY. With it comes a heartfelt thank you to the souls who joined in to dance, laugh, cry, ruminate and hold space, a thank you for the learning and a thank you for that positive energy that always somehow found it’s way back.
LIST OF SOME GOOD THINGS: dancing, making art, tears with a scene partner, old friends, laughing, hugs, jokes, more jokes, new friends, dancing on rooftops, speaking about the future of India and Australia on the tele (yes nerd!), talking intercultural storytelling at Vivid with some Aussie acting greats, strutting in couture, promptly changing into cotton pyjamas, the Americas, community building, leading a film which aced representation (ya’ll seen Wedding Season!?), alone time, jamming in the car, chancing upon a Gurdwara during a morning walk in Los Feliz, dorbiiiii, bookstore arvos, jungle walks, ocean dips, yoga on the shores of Lake Atitlan, Climate Summit in the Galapagos with legendary humans, planting trees, hitched up lehengas and barefoot dance floors, Asian Excellence, thought leaders, Ayurvedic eating, sustainability learning, zero fast fashion, social entrepreneurship, HALDI, pranayama, mini ego deaths, getting it wrong, surrendering past stories, making way for new ones, returning to Melbourne to eat mamas rotis ….MORE DANCING!
2023 LESSGOOO! 🧡🕺🏽🙏🏽
2022 OUTTAKE
I came across this image today from a shoot done mid year. I stopped to look at her, at the girl staring at me. I thought about the way that she was discarded as ‘not good enough’ for whatever purpose she was shot.
I considered the year from the point of view of that which ‘didn’t make the cut’. That which was rejected, either through my own eyes or that of another. And yet the year was ‘normal’: organs pulsed, work continued, the gaze poured in, both the delicious and the dickhead dictums of the past visited in turns. Love was shared and loneliness felt.
Today I consider the seconds I spent within it saying that something was not enough; the seconds not spent basking in the knowingness that everything was, is. Those seconds are gone, fleeting like all else. The impressions remain.
I realised why this had, in a split second, become a discarded photo by my own consciousness. Because I was scared. I was scared of what my eyes said as they stared into the lens. Scared of their defiance. Of the strength they exuded. Because this was what was once taught to me, that my defiance was a stubbornness that made me hard – hard work. That I needed to remain soft, malleable. The moment I looked at it I would have become acutely aware of the stories my eyes were daring to tell. ‘Not yet’, my conscious mind shssshd it.
But we know well by now that suppressing story is one of the key creators of illness.
And so, in one of the least original things to have been uttered on this platform, bareness is where I want to sit in 2023. In pure bareness. So that the only gazes which I dare not reveal are the ones that lie.
📸 image which I love by @justin_griffiths
2022 OUTTAKE
I came across this image today from a shoot done mid year. I stopped to look at her, at the girl staring at me. I thought about the way that she was discarded as ‘not good enough’ for whatever purpose she was shot.
I considered the year from the point of view of that which ‘didn’t make the cut’. That which was rejected, either through my own eyes or that of another. And yet the year was ‘normal’: organs pulsed, work continued, the gaze poured in, both the delicious and the dickhead dictums of the past visited in turns. Love was shared and loneliness felt.
Today I consider the seconds I spent within it saying that something was not enough; the seconds not spent basking in the knowingness that everything was, is. Those seconds are gone, fleeting like all else. The impressions remain.
I realised why this had, in a split second, become a discarded photo by my own consciousness. Because I was scared. I was scared of what my eyes said as they stared into the lens. Scared of their defiance. Of the strength they exuded. Because this was what was once taught to me, that my defiance was a stubbornness that made me hard – hard work. That I needed to remain soft, malleable. The moment I looked at it I would have become acutely aware of the stories my eyes were daring to tell. ‘Not yet’, my conscious mind shssshd it.
But we know well by now that suppressing story is one of the key creators of illness.
And so, in one of the least original things to have been uttered on this platform, bareness is where I want to sit in 2023. In pure bareness. So that the only gazes which I dare not reveal are the ones that lie.
📸 image which I love by @justin_griffiths
Merry Christmas 🎄 from down under to all of you beautiful souls.
May we each find a life of dance, gratitude, peace & merriment 💃🏽🦀🕺🏽 World
Merry Christmas 🎄 from down under to all of you beautiful souls.
May we each find a life of dance, gratitude, peace & merriment 💃🏽🦀🕺🏽 World
Merry Christmas 🎄 from down under to all of you beautiful souls.
May we each find a life of dance, gratitude, peace & merriment 💃🏽🦀🕺🏽 World
Merry Christmas 🎄 from down under to all of you beautiful souls.
May we each find a life of dance, gratitude, peace & merriment 💃🏽🦀🕺🏽 World
Merry Christmas 🎄 from down under to all of you beautiful souls.
May we each find a life of dance, gratitude, peace & merriment 💃🏽🦀🕺🏽 World
Merry Christmas 🎄 from down under to all of you beautiful souls.
May we each find a life of dance, gratitude, peace & merriment 💃🏽🦀🕺🏽 World
What now? Did someone just say #hotgirlsummer no 3?
Let’s get brown! 😎🏖 Straya
What now? Did someone just say #hotgirlsummer no 3?
Let’s get brown! 😎🏖 Straya
What now? Did someone just say #hotgirlsummer no 3?
Let’s get brown! 😎🏖 Straya
What now? Did someone just say #hotgirlsummer no 3?
Let’s get brown! 😎🏖 Straya
What now? Did someone just say #hotgirlsummer no 3?
Let’s get brown! 😎🏖 Straya
What now? Did someone just say #hotgirlsummer no 3?
Let’s get brown! 😎🏖 Straya
Did someone say COVER SHOOT!?
So excited to share this space for @stellarmag with my fellow #classof2022 🎭 comrades @thomas.weatherall @michelle.lim.davidson @asheryasbincek @jheuston 🔥
Big shout out to….
📸: @stevenchee
💄: @kristyanlow
💆🏽♀️: @graemecumming.com.au
👗: @irenetsolakas
✍️: @siobhan.duck
👑: @sarrahlemarquand
(Grab your copy of the full interview and shoot in The Sunday Telegraph NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The
Sunday Mail (QLD) and Sunday Mail (SA) today!)
Did someone say COVER SHOOT!?
So excited to share this space for @stellarmag with my fellow #classof2022 🎭 comrades @thomas.weatherall @michelle.lim.davidson @asheryasbincek @jheuston 🔥
Big shout out to….
📸: @stevenchee
💄: @kristyanlow
💆🏽♀️: @graemecumming.com.au
👗: @irenetsolakas
✍️: @siobhan.duck
👑: @sarrahlemarquand
(Grab your copy of the full interview and shoot in The Sunday Telegraph NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The
Sunday Mail (QLD) and Sunday Mail (SA) today!)
Did someone say COVER SHOOT!?
So excited to share this space for @stellarmag with my fellow #classof2022 🎭 comrades @thomas.weatherall @michelle.lim.davidson @asheryasbincek @jheuston 🔥
Big shout out to….
📸: @stevenchee
💄: @kristyanlow
💆🏽♀️: @graemecumming.com.au
👗: @irenetsolakas
✍️: @siobhan.duck
👑: @sarrahlemarquand
(Grab your copy of the full interview and shoot in The Sunday Telegraph NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The
Sunday Mail (QLD) and Sunday Mail (SA) today!)
Did someone say COVER SHOOT!?
So excited to share this space for @stellarmag with my fellow #classof2022 🎭 comrades @thomas.weatherall @michelle.lim.davidson @asheryasbincek @jheuston 🔥
Big shout out to….
📸: @stevenchee
💄: @kristyanlow
💆🏽♀️: @graemecumming.com.au
👗: @irenetsolakas
✍️: @siobhan.duck
👑: @sarrahlemarquand
(Grab your copy of the full interview and shoot in The Sunday Telegraph NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The
Sunday Mail (QLD) and Sunday Mail (SA) today!)
Did someone say COVER SHOOT!?
So excited to share this space for @stellarmag with my fellow #classof2022 🎭 comrades @thomas.weatherall @michelle.lim.davidson @asheryasbincek @jheuston 🔥
Big shout out to….
📸: @stevenchee
💄: @kristyanlow
💆🏽♀️: @graemecumming.com.au
👗: @irenetsolakas
✍️: @siobhan.duck
👑: @sarrahlemarquand
(Grab your copy of the full interview and shoot in The Sunday Telegraph NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The
Sunday Mail (QLD) and Sunday Mail (SA) today!)
Did someone say COVER SHOOT!?
So excited to share this space for @stellarmag with my fellow #classof2022 🎭 comrades @thomas.weatherall @michelle.lim.davidson @asheryasbincek @jheuston 🔥
Big shout out to….
📸: @stevenchee
💄: @kristyanlow
💆🏽♀️: @graemecumming.com.au
👗: @irenetsolakas
✍️: @siobhan.duck
👑: @sarrahlemarquand
(Grab your copy of the full interview and shoot in The Sunday Telegraph NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The
Sunday Mail (QLD) and Sunday Mail (SA) today!)
Love was definitely in the air!
So many beautiful humans (even those gogglebox dudes), a birthday girl, being part of representing team #TheTwelve on the night the show won Best Miniseries, witnessing my glorious colleague Brooke Satchwell take home Best Supporting Actress, seeing the South Asian community show up in style, meeting my @sooshimango brothers and of course being dressed by my fellow #WestSideStory hoodlum @jasongrech (we grew up on the side of the tracks in Melbourne where the going was seemingly rougher and dreams needed an added dollop of resilience to survive).
Grateful to be part of so many intertwining stories in one evening. 🙏🏽🧡 @aacta @foxtel
Love was definitely in the air!
So many beautiful humans (even those gogglebox dudes), a birthday girl, being part of representing team #TheTwelve on the night the show won Best Miniseries, witnessing my glorious colleague Brooke Satchwell take home Best Supporting Actress, seeing the South Asian community show up in style, meeting my @sooshimango brothers and of course being dressed by my fellow #WestSideStory hoodlum @jasongrech (we grew up on the side of the tracks in Melbourne where the going was seemingly rougher and dreams needed an added dollop of resilience to survive).
Grateful to be part of so many intertwining stories in one evening. 🙏🏽🧡 @aacta @foxtel
Made it. @aacta awards in custom @jasongrech 🥹 sometimes you just gotta find a patch and take a seat 🤷🏽♀️ #westsidestory
That hollywood hair @byliztieu